Eternal Echoes

Friday 5: don't call it a comeback edition

Will smama over at Rev Gals says; Alright, so I'm dropping by for a brief return stint as contributer. Please, hold down the applause (also please don't forget NOT to cut and paste this part).... (sorry couldn't resist)

Parishioners pushing for carols before you digested your turkey?

Organist refusing to play Advent hymns because he/she already has them planned for Lessons & Carols?

Find yourself reading Luke and thinking of a variety of ways to tell Linus where to stick it? (Lights please.)

Then this quick and easy Friday Five is for you! And for those of you with a more positive attitude, have no fear. I am sure more sacred and reverent Friday Fives will follow.

Please tell us your least favourite/most annoying seasonal....

1) dessert/cookie/family food

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Well traditionally we eat turkey at Christmas here in the UK- and then keep eating it- finally it gets made into soup- my least favourite food has to be "Christmas leftover soup"...It is not that I don't like the soup itself, but making it year after year- a family tradition often has me craving junk food!!!

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2) beverage (seasonal beer, eggnog w/ way too much egg and not enough nog, etc...)

Cheap and nasty sherry- we seem to have a thing about cheap sherry at Christmas, and it is often inflicted on unsuspecting folk in the name of hospitality.

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3) tradition (church, family, other)

Endless and often pointless social functions where weary ministers are supposed to appear fresh and smiling, ready to eat yet another rock hard mince pie and drink warm tea....arrgh

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4) decoration

Tacky shiny things hung from ceilings....arrgh...again...

but worse still are these:

Have we gone mad?????

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5) gift (received or given)

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Ah the easy one: please do not give me pointless smelly stuff, powder, bubble bath etc...I have a collection ... it is dusty and unused- occasionally I give it away to sales/ charity raffles- but I can be guaranteed to win the **** stuff back again!

A good alternative for that difficult to buy for person.... how about something like this;

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BONUS: SONG/CD that makes you want to tell the elves where to stick it.

Band Adi's "Do they know it's Christmas?" Not sure why it drives me mad- I think it is the sentimentality of the lyrics- yes it raised awareness, but now it serves to make us smug- and we can't afford to be smug!

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Thanks Will Smama, I needed to get that out of my system... and now, on with advent!!!

To finish;

Our Father Christmas,

who art in Walmart/ Asda ( delete as appropriate),

hallowed be thy games.

thy new releases come,

thy videoing be done,

in Nicam as in mono;

give us this day our daily e-mails,

and forgive is for not spending enough,

as we forgive those who spend too little on us;

lead us not into Oxfam,

but deliver us from charitable giving;

for thine is the DVD,

the widescreen and the game boy,

forever and ever…..

Second life and the virtual self

Mike Bursell has an excellent post on this here.

GO AND READ IT!

Moonlight

Full of
Mystery and magic
Casting shadows
in the night,
the full moon rises.

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She calls to us
In whispers,
to abandon our beds
to hear the call of
moon broken darkness,
of midnight possibilities..

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To know that God
is God of the night
as well of the day.

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My contribution to Christine's invitation to poetry at Abbey of the Arts

Love one another- a simple commandment?

Romans 14:1 (MsgB) 
    Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don't see things the way you do. And don't jump all over them every time they do or say something you don't agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.

Jesus command to his disciples was clear and simple:

^{John 13:34}I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Like I said clear and simple, and so difficult to put into practise!

After a week of dealing with complicated pastoral situations I am left reflecting why it is that loving one another is so difficult, and am left with the conclusion that it is mostly because we cannot ( or will not) try to see others as God sees them, and that we struggle  accept people who we see as  radically different; people who challenge our comfortable notion of who we are, and how church needs to be.

I am not offering any easy solutions, ( if anyone knows any please let me know), but do offer the following reflections;

When Jesus gave this commandment, he gave it to a diverse group of people, a confused group of people, after all, their leader and teacher had just washed their feet, and their whole idea of leadership had just been turned on its head! He'd spoken openly of the betrayal he was about to suffer, and then commanded them in their vulnerability and confusion to love one another.

How often do we find ourselves lashing out in our vulnerability and confusion, hauling up the drawbridges of welcome when our comfort and expectations are challenged? How difficult is it for us to remember Jesus words, to take the step forward and offer to wash the others feet, or to accept their ministrations towards us?

How often will we fight to defend our corner when we should be listening to others, and at least seeking out some common ground?

The challenge comes to all, but perhaps first to those of us who would dare to call ourselves mature, to put down our swords, better yet, to beat them into ploughs, that the hard ground of our own hearts might be turned over and made useful again.

Lord save us from ourselves, from our exalted opinions and proclamations, help us to see others as you see them, to attend to the planks in our own eyes. When we are beyond love, come Holy Spirit, stir us up and work in us a new thing, that by our love one for another our discipleship would become evident to all. AMEN

                                  

In search of space....

Downham Markets red and white Christmas lights are strung across the town, brightening the night sky. There would have been a time when I welcomed the appearance of lights, but these ones I have come to associate with painful memories of our first Christmas here four years ago; train journeys up and down to London where Chris was in hospital, walking home in the cold evenings and feeling somehow the lights were inappropriate.

Life has moved on since that time, but I am tired, and am finding it difficult to welcome the arrival of the holiday season. There has not been a year while we have been here that we have not spent at least two weeks in London at the Royal Brompton Hospital, his marathon 3 month stay fell right in the middle of that time.

...but life has moved on, Chris, Jo and Jon have left home for University, I have been accepted for and begun Ordination training in the Methodist Church, we will find out next May whether Tim has also been accepted, and then we will begin again to consider the way forward....

Emma and Paul have both left home and formed relationships of their own...Paul's ride has not been easy.

...we have a lot to be thankful for...

....yet I am weary of living life on the edge, waiting for news, anticipating change I need an oasis, away from the bright lights and crowds where I can take all of this in.

But deadlines press in, assignments need to be written and preparations need to be made for at least a subdued family celebration- we need that- and I know they will help, they will all pitch in, Emma has taken on lots of baking already making Christmas Cake and puddings....

I am trying to move forward in a positive way, but right now it is hard...

Just for a moment Lord, could you stop the world, I want to get off, just for a moment...

......on Friday I am collecting Chris, he has a hospital appointment next week...

                                 

Doubts...

In broken bread

You offer me

Food from your side,

Quieting my doubts,

Comforting my fears..

…

You come

At that moment

Inviting me to

Join my heart

With yours..

…

And always I withdraw

For the closeness

Consumes me

And I am not

Ready

To be consumed.

…

But I will

Come again….

And one day

I will be

Ready.

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words of life.... ( meditation on a Taize chant)

Within our darkest night

You kindle a fire

That never dies away,

Never dies away…

…

I hold these words

Within my soul.

Like living water,

They spring into life

Without prompting

An unvoiced prayer

Turned again to music,

Turned again to you

Lifting me beyond myself

Into your presence,

Where life is held

In all it’s vulnerability.

Brokenness,

And despair.

A fragile thing

Held and loved

…

Within our darkest night

You kindle a fire

That never dies away,

Never dies away…

…

The music calls my

Heart to soar

...

Mystics, mirrors,& madness - invited to tango.....

                                     

(Tango, by Arnold Isbister)

I am reflecting on discussions from yesterday evenings Feminist Perspectives Module session ( part of an MA in Pastoral Theology).

What if God's invitation to imtimacy were more like an invitation to tango, than  to join in a stately dance? A suggestion made by our tutor seemingly unrelated to the evening session and yet I find the question haunts me; we were looking at Chapters from Anne Carson's book Decreation; specifically concerning mystics Sappho,  Marguerite Porete , and Simone Weil, and how they "wrote God". In each case the depth of their encounter was spiritualy and somehow sensualy erotic, and may it seems have driven them to madness. Filled with the desire to become less, to lay themselves aside in order to be consumed by the otherness of God.

Weil says;

"If only I knew how to disappear, there would be a perfect union of love between God and the earth I tread the sea I hear."

Weils desire to become less and less manifested itself in voluntary starvation- possibly more appropriately named anorexia- the physicality of food reminded her of her humanness, something she wished to set aside in order to be consumed by God. Her reason was that she was acting out of sympathy for those in France who did not have enough to eat seems a thin veil for one whose writings reveal depths of desire and denial  as she struggled to lay herself aside.

Porete sees herself in an erotic triangle of love within God, she herself takes two parts, the inner and the outer self, she speaks of herself as null, deficient and naked, receiving poverty as repletion, and God as an overflowing lover.  She was burned at the stake in 1310 for her book about the absolute daring of love "The Mirror of Simple souls".

Sappho we know little about, except through her poetry, and even then the details are but fragments, Anne Carson makes two interesting suggestions which pick up again the desire to become less, to reach outside of self to "god". Sappho describes herself as greener than grass, taking the position of standing outside of herself; Carson notes that this state was attributed by the Greeks to mad people, geniuses and lovers. She quotes the last line of Sappho's poem;

"All is to be dared because even a person of poverty...."

Stating that we do not know, nor can we hope to understand the depths of meaning retained within those poignant words, and yet if all is to be dared, dare we to read that all is given....

Should we be awed by or afraid of what these women reveal through their writings, do the hold up a mirror to our own longings, or perhaps what is peculiar to women a sense of self-loathing that goes beyond destructive to the actual decreation of our very beings?

Is this a search for gnosis, and does it have anything to teach us about ministering to those who struggle with issues of self-harm, anorexia and the like?

Is desire for God dangerous, should we wish ourselves consumed, swept off our feet into a divine tango, a dance of desire and danger- especially if we dare to venture beyond its boundaries?`

I find I am left with more questions than answers, but conclude that there is a fine line between love and desire and total obsession, that where love frees and empowers us, for in it we know ourselves loved, valued and worthy of love, obsession drives us over the edge to madness where the boundaries are broken and we risk not only loosing ourselves but also God, for we venture to a place where we are no longer held.

If as our tutor evocatively suggested , perichoresis  is more like a tango than a stately dance, we would do well to stay within the rules of the dance, held by firm boundaries of tradition, accepting God's invitation to dance with care and guidance from those whose dancing skills are superior to ours. We would do well to look carefully into the mirror these women offer to our own souls in considering our responses to God's invitation to dance.

Which Superhero are you?

I am;

Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman 79% Green Lantern 70% Superman 65% Supergirl 64% Robin 62% Spider-Man 55% Batman 55% The Flash 55% Catwoman 35% Iron Man 35% Hulk 30%

You are a beautiful princess with great strength of character.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Hat tip to Mother Laura

Feminism challenges Christianity ; is it a crisis to be weathered or an opportunity to be grasped?

I am blogging these thoughts as an atempt to find my way to a constructive critique of Daphne Hampson's book Theology and Feminism. ( I am a bit late in getting to grips with this as it is for an MA session tomorrow)  so..... just me thinking  and carrying out a daunting task in print!!!

Daphne Hampson creates a compelling case:

Her book Theology and Feminism tackles the central theme that Christianity and feminism cannot be compatible saying:

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… it will be said that Christianity has weathered many a crisis: feminism is simply the latest. As the saying goes, Christianity is always adapting itself to something believable: it will do so again. It is conservative Christians who, together with more radical feminists, perceive that feminism represents not just one crisis among many. For the feminist challenge strikes at the heart of Christianity." (p1)

	"...feminism represents the death-knell of Christianity as a viable religious option...the feminist challenge strikes at the heart of Christianity." The heart of Christianity is the proclamation of Jesus as a revelation of God’s self. Whether that claim is made in the more orthodox, fully God fully human assertion, or the more liberal suggestion that Jesus is special and set apart, totally unique there is no other like him. She also believes the resurrection to have been quite impossible. .
	The religious myths of the Israelites and, later, of Christian theology represent simply two of many groups in the world who interpreted the world from their own perspective. In fact she see’s the Christian “myth” more dangerous because of its insistence in recognising Jesus as a part of the Godhead thereby underpinning the patriarchal attitude worldview. .
	The Christian myth is no longer either tenable or ethical Again the underpinning of patriarchal values is cited as the underlying problem, Christianity is not ethical because it does not, and cannot not provide room for equality. She looks at the doctrine of the Trinity as a hierarchical structure in which Father and Son are emphasised over an androgynous “Spirit”. She furthers argues that to imbue the Holy Spirit with feminine characteristics is to further highlight the hierarchal structure within the Godhead. She further states that according to Christianity God is to man as man is to woman. So the man is weak and sinful in relation to God, but he is strong and upright in relation to the (even weaker and more sinful) woman. Woman is always at the bottom of the heap. So Christianity is morally bankrupt. .
	The path of the future is towards post-Christianity: to find a method of viewing God independently of the Christian myth, and in today's language. In doing so, we "shall be doing no more than did others in their time, drawing on the cultural milieu in which they lived." She argues against the quest to name the Christian God She, or to attribute feminine characteristics to “him”, stating again that this simply highlights an impossible and impassable hierarchy! For Hampson, the way forward is an impersonal theism that can support a different model of selfhood and of right gender relations. Despite all their manifold differences, feminists have a different construal of the "self-in-relation" from that of classical Western theology, and especially from the model of the individual ego which plagues modernity. In this so-called “masculinist” order of things, the self and the other compete with one another and are therefore perceived as a threat to one another. For this reason, the Enlightenment self is cordoned off from relations to the other in order to protect its fragile ego boundaries. . ………………………………………………………………………………………….. . Three Biblical arguments: .        Is Jesus a feminist? . “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” Luke 4. 18-19 Hampson examines Jesus life and teachings, concluding that he was not a feminist that the central point of his message lay elsewhere. I would like to argue that if we take the view that God’s message in Christ was to follow his manifesto to its conclusion then although Jesus may not have been a feminist, it demands that through unfolding revelation that his followers should become so, just as most have understood that slavery is wrong, so most will come to understand that patriarchy does not have a place within a message of true freedom! .        Woman as sinner.

Hampson’s challenge in regard to sin is potent; given women's different starting place in relationship to the Christian tradition, she critiques the language of obedience, and sacrificial self-giving, making a spirited defense of a feminist discourse of autonomy, self-assertion, and equitable gender relations providing central clues to how a feminist theology of sin and grace must be re-envisioned if it is to move women forward into freedom.

Here again I believe we can look to the Scriptures to glimpse Jesus putting this into action on two separate occasions. First with the Samaritan woman in John Chapter 4, and then again with the woman caught in adultery in John Chapter 8. Certainly in the later passage he forces her accusers to acknowledge their own sin, thereby placing them on an equal footing.

The challenge remains for Christianity today to continue and carry forward that revelation.

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       The Trinity as a hierarchy

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Her argument for the Trinity as a hierarchy is again a point where I would like to argue another model, the linear descent from Father to Son to Holy Spirit which would suggest such a hierarchy is a human construct, just as in fact the doctrine of the Trinity is!

Surely there is room then for us to view the Godhead in a different way, accepting God as transcendent, neither Father nor Mother, transcendent being more than simply androgynous, but concluding that God is other, and though we may be made in God’s image, we only reflect a small part of that image.

If we see the persons of the Trinity as engaged in the divine perichorisis ( dance) into which we are invited we begin to see a new interplay between them, and find that we are not  required to ascend a hierarchy, but a rather caught up into a relationship of mutual giving and receiving.

I say mutual giving and receiving, as opposed to self giving in order to differentiate this relationship from Hampson’s move towards the need for self actualisation, which although I understand the need for each human being to reach her/his full potential, I wonder at which point concentration on self is less than healthy...

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This is by no means a conclusive nor even a comprehensive argument, I guess I want to clarify my position to myself as a Christian and a feminist. I have more questions to ask, and to answer!

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Christ as Holy Wisdom.